What some cities in China may look like:[img.timeinc.net image 611x404]Those stacks of backs are e-waste sitting in the streets of Guiyu, lining the streets. That man is carrying phone casings on two tricycles to be re-used.

All partisans bullshiat and snarkiness aside, if I knew that I was responsible for the shiat that went down in Iraq alone, the civilians in Iraq, our own soldiers....if I had that weight on my conscience, that would fark me up. How do they live with that? I'm not speaking as a "liberal" or a republican hater, just as a human. How does someone live with that shiat? It's one thing if we had to send people to a war that needed to be fought like WWII but how the fark....I don't know, man. That shiat would fark me up for life. Like worse than Darth Vader slaughtering the Jedi.

Vancouver is nice when it isn't the rainy season. Cheap, wonderful eats, beautiful friendly women, you can buy KB on the streets. It is dramatically beautiful. RCs sequestered in Burnaby, thankfully. Bars close early. Seemed to this Chicagoan to be a wee bit candy-assed, though. Oh, and FFS, get some real sand for your beaches, those little pebbles you use truly suck. Stanley Park was rather marvy, my son and I befriended a large seal, who seemed to have a big heart and did not seem to be a candy-ass. The next day they found some young girl rape-victims buried there, but nobody bothered us.

Mugato:All partisans bullshiat and snarkiness aside, if I knew that I was responsible for the shiat that went down in Iraq alone, the civilians in Iraq, our own soldiers....if I had that weight on my conscience, that would fark me up. How do they live with that? I'm not speaking as a "liberal" or a republican hater, just as a human. How does someone live with that shiat? It's one thing if we had to send people to a war that needed to be fought like WWII but how the fark....I don't know, man. That shiat would fark me up for life. Like worse than Darth Vader slaughtering the Jedi.

The big chair isn't for everyone. You make decisions that can mean that millions suffer and die.

I have always said that if I had been in Bush's seat I would have went into Iraq based on what his intell people were telling him at the time--remember, Saddam tried to bluff the world out of invading by claiming to have vast stockpiles of chemical weapons and actually used some on his own population. Saddam's strategy backfired fatally. I also said that I would have started a military draft and prepared a plan for a proper invasion and long term occupation in advance, not just a blitzkrieg and assume that the civilian population would welcome me as a conquering hero. That is where Bush farked up. You had people who tried to fight this war and Afghanistan on the cheap. War is not cheap. War breaks things, is costly, kills civilians and military personnel and should never be undertaken lightly. But if you go down the path of war, you owe it to the people you send to make sure they have the numbers, the tools and the talent to end it decisively in a manner that leaves no doubt that further resistance is futile. Doing so not only ensures that the maximum number of your people come home alive, but civilian causalities are minimized, and those you conquer can go about getting on with a new era instead of pissing their lives away in a protracted guerrilla campaign.

Mugato:All partisans bullshiat and snarkiness aside, if I knew that I was responsible for the shiat that went down in Iraq alone, the civilians in Iraq, our own soldiers....if I had that weight on my conscience, that would fark me up. How do they live with that? I'm not speaking as a "liberal" or a republican hater, just as a human. How does someone live with that shiat? It's one thing if we had to send people to a war that needed to be fought like WWII but how the fark....I don't know, man. That shiat would fark me up for life. Like worse than Darth Vader slaughtering the Jedi.

Well, if you're talking about Bush, he probably passes some of the blame around. And actually, he'd be right to do so, to a point. While invading Iraq was probably not a great idea, it was the Iraqis (and people from the region around that country) that were most determined to fark the place up. They viewed Saddam's ouster as their chance to set up a theocracy, Taliban-style.

hdhale:I have always said that if I had been in Bush's seat I would have went into Iraq based on what his intell people were telling him at the time--

Oh bullshiat. Invading Iraq had nothing to do with WMD or intelligence. The neocons had a hard on for invading Iraq when Clinton was in office. After Bush got elected in 2000 the only question was how to bully the democrats into voting for it. September 11th took care of that. The WMD bullshiat was just a fairy tale created to justify the invasion.

People make fun of Detroit, but now that the bad parts all depopulated then kind of burned up and then were bulldozed into the basements and covered with dirt and then abandoned to the wild, it isn't so bad any more.

I find it telling that people leap to accuse soldiers and politicians for the current state of Iraq, rather than the militias and individuals who actively seek to destabilize the area because they know they won't be blamed.

Yup, I live in Vancouver proper, I'm white and I'm in the minority now.

Did the boring white people all flee to some place like Winnipeg?

Just seems like the kind of place that would hold such people. I've never been, so I don't know.

/boring white person myself//underrated ethnicity, really///everything where we go is usually cheap and housing is decently affordable

I don't think the number of white people is decreasing per se, it's just that the population of non-whites is rising faster. There are other factors like being priced out of the housing market by new Chinese money.

And I won't deny there are cultural factors in me wanting to sell my condo and move out to a house in the burbs.

/Wife knows another (white) mother in our area with a son in school who's the only white kid in class.